Warren Bennis

Warren Gamaliel Bennis (1925 to 2014) was an American scholar, organizational consultant and author, widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of leadership studies. He was University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and founding chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. Management expert Tom Peters wrote in 1993 that his work at MIT in the 1960s on group behavior foreshadowed, and helped bring about, less hierarchical, more democratic and adaptive institutions, and James O'Toole credited him with developing an interest in the then-nonexistent field of leadership with his Revisionist Theory of Leadership in the Harvard Business Review in 1961.